Snow Day #2

Technically we've only missed two days of school—Friday and today—but church was also cancelled, so we've basically been "snowed in" all winter and now they've gone and cancelled school tomorrow as well. I don't really mind snow days; I just don't want to have to make them up later.

We only had three inclement weather days written into our calendar this year, anyway, which means we've spent them all on this one storm. I want to know whose brilliant idea that was, considering last year they called nine snow days.

Also, considering tomorrow's high is forecast to be 56°F (14°C, so basically a Canadian summer (okay, maybe not summer but definitely spring)). Actually, I really don't mean to whine about the weather too much because over all it's quite lovely. After all, who can complain about an average low of 0°C in January when one grew up in a place where January saw an average high of -1°C?

I love winter in the south.

source

Benjamin Barber

I cut Benjamin's hair on Thursday, which made Andrew jealous, so on Saturday he let Benjamin play barber (and then had me even things out). Benjamin had a blast! With any luck we may have even cured his fear of the clippers. He started crying (wailing) while I was cutting his hair on Thursday so I told him that if he didn't stop he'd get in trouble. Instead he laughed the whole time I was cutting his hair, very over-the-top. It was a "Hahahahahaha! Aaahhh! Hahahaha!" but it was better than the screaming he was doing earlier.

Snow play

So, um, BINGO!

They've cancelled church tomorrow and that's the last one I needed to get a BINGO. That game was much shorter lived than I imagined it would be. We've been having a lot of fun in the snow and it chances are we'll be getting another storm or two (or more) so perhaps I'll go for a whiteout (I'd call it a blackout but it's winter...so...). I don't really want to use up all our snow days though.

The kids spent the entire day out in the snow today. They went out in the morning and came in for lunch around 1:00, informing us that they were just coming in to eat before heading back outside (which was fine with us). Rachel said the prayer for lunch and said, "and please help us remember to go back outside after lunch." As if they'd forget.

(What we forgot was the playdate at Sadie's house...oops).

We went for a walk to the park this afternoon. Andrew and Rachel rode their bikes. And I will not write very much more because I have a screaming baby on my lap...

Eye, yai, yai!

Rachel came inside crying because she had something stuck in her eye. I helped her strip out of her winter gear and then examined her eye.

"Look up, look down, look left, look right," I said, but I saw nothing.

Fortunately, thanks to a rather traumatic eye experience from my youth, I thought to look under her upper eyelid and there I found a lovely fleck of something. She'd already been crying, but the speck hadn't budged so I helped her flush her eyes out at the kitchen sink—literally running the water on her eye—but the fleck stood its ground. It was lodged in there pretty well.

So I prepared to repeat what the doctor had done to me (after reviewing how online since it's been nearly fifteen years since my incident).

I got a paint chip stuck in my eye at work while I was stacking chairs. Because I worked at a pool and was around dangerous chemicals, I had to do a chemical eye wash in addition to flushing my eyes with water before I went to the ER where the doctor flipped my eyelid over and fished it out with a Q-tip. It took like two seconds. And half a million dollars.*

My eye, he said, "look[ed] like an ice rink," with little lacerations all over it from the paint chip skating up and down my eyeball every time I blinked. It was super painful. I had an antibiotic to prevent infection and couldn't wear contacts for, like, a month (which really wouldn't be traumatic now because I haven't worn contacts in years but in high school it was kind of a bummer) and my eye was puffy for quite a while. It was not fun.

Rachel's speck was much smaller than my paint chip and, though I don't know how we didn't ever think to look under my eyelid (too bad YouTube wasn't a thing back then), I luckily knew to check under her eyelid early. We tried flushing it out with water again, now that we knew where it was, but to no avail, so our next course of action was the Q-tip method.

She's old enough now that she understands that staying still is important, but she had a hard time relaxing enough to let me flip her eyelid inside out. Once it was flipped over, though, I had Andrew stick wet Q-tip in there to pick up the speck. It took us like two seconds (once we figured out what we were doing). And now she's feeling much better.

It's amazing how much pain a tiny foreign object can cause!

Here's the method we used, in case you ever need to flip an eyelid inside out one day.

*A slight exaggeration. And work paid. But still.

Whoopsie

Zoë was a little too rough with the toy box. She was reaching for a toy (and holding onto the toy box, obviously) when she lost her balance (and didn't let go of the toy box) and pulled the whole box on top of herself. Poor thing!

Winter in the South—BINGO!

To keep from going insane this winter (nine snow days last year was a little bit much) I made up a "Winter in the South" bingo game. I think I'm going to print out one card for everyone in our family and we'll see who gets to bingo first. I don't know what the prize will be.

Something awesome like...sleeping in...or something.

That's all the kids could talk about before they went to bed last night, "Yay! It's a snow day! I can turn off my alarm and sleep as long as I want to!" But then they—all three of them—were up before their alarms even usually go off, probably woken up by the tinkle, tinkle of snow pellets dancing on the roof.

So much for sleeping in!

Zoë went to book club with me last night so, thankfully, slept through her siblings' early morning jubilee.

Anyway, here's a link to the cards so you can print out one for yourself!

Sunday best(-ish)

Not last Sunday but the Sunday before I broke out the hair gel (that hadn't been touched since the girls did their last ballet performance...in 2013) and helped Benjamin comb his hair. He's never had the kind of hair that lies flat naturally. It's bent on defying gravity.

I don't think we'll add doing Benjamin's hair to our regular morning routine, but doesn't he look handsome?

This past Sunday, Benjamin chose a shirt and a nice pair of corduroy pants to go with them, then Andrew told him to pick out a pair of socks, so he did. He found a lovely pair of bright orange halloween socks, with purple polka-dots and black jack-lantern faces, which was fine because he was wearing long pants and shoes, right?

Andrew finished tying up Benjamin's shoes and then Benjamin reached down and started tucking his pants into his socks.

"What are you doing?" we asked.

"I'm tucking my pants into my socks," he said.

"I can see that," I said. "Why?"

"Because if I don't then no one will see them!" he explained.

Full disclosure: Andrew wore the Star Wars socks he got for Christmas to church. And he only combs and parts his hair probably once every four years. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

Potty training (and don't even talk about sleep training)

Shortly before Christmas I took the kids on a walk to look at Christmas lights. I looked at the calendar to figure out when it might have been, but nothing telling is listed. It was an evening that Andrew was coming home later than usual for some reason or another. Maybe it was the night he took the girls out to watch Star Wars...so maybe it was only me and the two little ones on the walk. I frankly can't remember (perhaps because it's 4:30 AM and I haven't been to bed yet because Zoë is a monster and my brain is completely malfunctioning).

Anyway, we walked down the street and around the corner and were nearly to the park when Benjamin pooped his pants. We'd just stopped to admire some of those weird light-up deer (you know the ones) when he just suddenly squatted in the middle of the road and started pushing.

"Do you need to go potty?" I asked.

"No!" he said.

"Are you pooping right now?" I asked.

"No!" he said.

"You are!" I gasped. "You're pooping! Why?! Why are you pooping right now?! Why would you do that?! Stop it right now! Stand up!"

I was rather angry about it because, as I recall, he'd pooped his pants a couple of days before while we were at the museum with my friend Emily (so, this second incident must have been Star Wars night) and I wasn't ready for another mess. We immediately turned around to go home.

"I'm not poopy, Mom," he said, waddling along beside me.

"I think you are," I said, observing the waddle.

Zoë's crawling

I should probably write about Zoë learning how to crawl before I forget when she did. At seven-and-a-half months, she's certainly not my earliest crawler, but she's not exactly the latest crawler either. Here's a video I took of her on January 15th, when she was really just figuring out how to propel herself forward (she's been stuck going backward for so long):



She's really not interested in crawling at all and would much prefer to walk. Since mastering the forward-crawl (and that was only three days ago, remember?) she's started pulling up on furniture like crazy, cruising her way around the room, and often letting go to balance on her own. She's fallen so many times today it's not even funny. When Andrew came home and I told him all the things she's been trying I said, "I swear she's fallen over like fifty times today."

Susan B. Anthony and Klingon

We'd just loaded into the van after ukulele practice when the girls started bickering in the backseat.

They both really wanted to read because they both wanted to watch an episode of television before bed and Andrew told them that they could...if they finished the books they were working on. Actually, I think only Miriam had to finish. She was nearly finished Harry Potter 3 (it has a proper title but at our house we call them by number).

Rachel's working on some epically long book. It's over 1000 pages. I don't remember what it's called. She checked it out of the library through her Kindle, so she was set to read on the ride home (and wasn't under an obligation to finish, merely make progress). Miriam, however, had forgotten to bring a flashlight and it was upset that she wouldn't be able to read on the way home.

"You can share the light of my Kindle," Rachel offered. "I can hold it out here and you can have enough light to see your page."

"It's not enough light!" Miriam fussed. "I need more!"

"Well, it's all the light I've got," Rachel snapped back.

"But I need more!" Miriam cried again.

"Why? It's light enough to see the words!"

"I can't read in dim light because then my eyes will grow weak just like Susan B. Anthony's did!" Miriam wailed. "They were ruined for the rest of her life, Rachel!"